Does video show steel wool burning when next to ringing iPhone? Fact Check

A video claims to show steel wool igniting when placed around an iPhone that takes an incoming phone call.

FALSE

The video was originally posted by Viral Video Labs on YouTube in December 2019. That video received hundreds of thousands of views when it was originally uploaded, but the video has since been copied elsewhere on the Internet.

It’s demonstrably false, since a more sceptical (and slowed down) viewing of the video shows that the fire effects on the steel wool use the “fade-in” special effect that is available on many video editing programs. Take a look at our own video that slows down the moment the steel wool supposedly catches fire.

You can see the fire gently fades into view, as opposed to being able to see the moment of ignition.

How was this achieved?

The most likely way this was achieved is that the person taking the video actually created two videos. In one, they call the iPhone which is surrounded by the [very much not on fire] steel wool. After that video is complete, they then ignite the steel wool with a lighter (or something similar) and take a second video showing the steel wool on fire.

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Then all is left to do is a simple cross-fading transition where the first video slowly fades out and the second video fades in at the key moment.

This would explain the fade-in effect and would also explain why the fire appears all around the steel wool at the same precise moment.

Of course, another avenue we could go down is that if steel wool could actually be ignited simply by being near an iPhone, this would have been something that would have been discovered many years ago and would have countless videos showing examples of the phenomenon all across the Internet.

We rank the video false.